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Which real-life sports games measure up and which leave gamers longing for the real thing?

By IGN Staff

Since the dawn of recorded history, sports have played a vital part in human culture. From the gladiatorial games of Ancient Rome to the ritualistic hunts of some Native Americans, sports say a lot about the people who play and watch them.

By and large, we North Americans love our sports. Whether it's little league baseball, varsity basketball, touch football with friends, or hockey with the old-timers' club, just about everybody loves at least one sport. Even those who don't much enjoy playing can like coaching or even watching live or on television.

With that in mind, and considering that more people own computers than ever before, the sports PC gaming industry certainly has a lot of demand to satiate. Equally, user standards are high and the games have to be good to please consumers. So how well do sports translate into PC games?

Since there are at least two ways to enjoy competitive sports - as a player and as a bystander (a casual fan, devoted fan, or coach), it's only fair to evaluate each sport from two different angles: the feel and the look. One at a time, in no particular order, here is an analysis of each of the major North American sports, and the successes and failures in their duplication into computer games so far.

Baseball

One of the major complications in trying to simulate the sport of baseball into a game is that there are many different perspectives in baseball. From pitching, to hitting, to fielding, to base running, there lots of different ways to see the game, each depending on where one is on the field and which team is batting.

With that in mind, baseball games on PC have come a long way since their origins back in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Among the most important major improvements to pitching are three-dimensional perspective, the ability to vary speed to pitch up and down instead of just left and right, various styles of pitches such as curveballs and knuckleballs, and more realistic fatigue progression. One of the most critical elements in pitching, both from the point of view of a pitcher and of a manager, is to minimize the workload on a starting pitcher's arm. That way, the pitcher can stay in the game longer, can be used again without too much rest, and will hopefully avoid injury. This critical aspect has been largely ignored or handled poorly for the longest time, and only recently are sports gaming companies beginning to pay attention.

The news is better for hitting enthusiasts. Folks who just love to hit outnumber their pitching, running, and fielding counterparts by far, since hitting a baseball appeals to even the most casual of fans. As a result, batting has been the focus of pretty much every baseball game ever released. That's the reason that despite the fact that any pitch is a duel between two people - a pitcher and a hitter, the perspective in a baseball video game is essentially always from the point of view of the hitter. Movement within the batter's box, the ability to pull versus push the ball, and the timing of the swing are all careful fore-thoughts in the slugger-dominated world of baseball gaming.

Controlling multiple runners on the base-paths is always difficult for a single individual, but play control is generally flexible enough to allow it and to make it easy enough to accomplish. Equally, fielding can only be executed so well since it would be nearly impossible to actually control more than one fielder at a time, or even to manually choose between them after a lightning quick line drive.

Baseball relies more on game mechanics and less on violent contact or sound than any other of the major sports, and that is perhaps one of the major reasons that no contact is ever found in its games. Even baseball's only real full contact hit, the slide home, comes off downright pacified on the video screen, where no effort is made to emphasize it.

American's pass-time on computer is about as good as it gets for fans and enthusiasts. Nearly every game, though, focuses all its resources in the pitcher-hitter duel, so baseball players who long for a true-to-life experience will find themselves disappointed by even the best PC offerings.

Basketball is perhaps the simplest of all major sports in terms of its replication into video games. While players take up various locations as positions and can focus on different aspects of offense or defense, there are no truly different positions like hockey's goalie, baseball's pitcher, or football's quarterback and kicker. As a result, nearly every ounce of energy put into a basketball game can go straight to its engine.

Primarily, basketball computer games emphasize exactly one perspective of the game: that of a fan, fairly high up, watching the game from mid-court. The view can shift from side to side, or zoom in and out, but rarely moves beyond that. This simplicity is a basketball game's primary strength, and also its primary weakness.

It's strength, however, is that most basketball games are easy to play and have an extremely sharp learning curve. You can literally pick up a copy of most basketball games and actually make a go of it on the easiest level of difficulty. At the same time, since basketball's appeal is simple and constant and in no way a novelty, it doesn't get boring after a few plays. Like a strong shoot-'em-up action thriller, it's the same game the first time you play it and the thousandth time you play it, but both can be equally satisfying.

Unfortunately, simplicity is a double-edged sword, and in the case of basketball, it makes for a strange experience. Anyone who's ever played the sport - and judging by its popularity that must be just about everyone - knows that basketball is fun because it wraps up two different activities all in one. First, maneuvering: the sometimes complex experience of dribbling the ball, protecting the ball, and moving around and between opponents. Second, shooting: the lining up of one's shot with the basket, then applying the proper technique and just the right amount of power to get it there.

On defense, the focus is singular - maneuvering, and so defense translates very well in a video game. Offense, though, is a different story altogether. Because of the computer games' simplicity and single perspective, maneuvering is given full priority over shooting. Dodging opponents' frisky hands and getting to the net is typically all there is to it, and generally speaking, shooting is all about pressing a button and hoping for the best. Even games that make an effort in this area still leave much to be desired with respect to the moving aspect of the game.

Until basketball computer games start to emphasize the shooting plus moving aspect of the sport, anyone hoping for a true offensive experience will feel somewhat shafted. Defense is spared this fate, though. For those who like to watch on television and believe that shooting is simple because the pros do it so easily and rack up a hundred points a game per team, basketball on the desktop is just right for you.

If Superbowl or Monday Night Football ratings are any indicator, this is one sport that every sports fan must watch. At the same time, donning a set of shoulder pads and a helmet and running into people is a very unique experience, something very hard to duplicate. Fortunately for football fans, some companies seem to be able to please everyone.

Football players each have their own unique position and purpose on a team and in a play. For some, blocking a single opponent is all that matters. For others, taking possession of the ball is followed by an attempt to dodge just about the entire opposing team. And one very important guy's butt is on the line with every snap, as he calls the play, takes the ball at the snap, and makes the play happen. That's a lot of real game experience to duplicate.

From the perspective of the live or home viewer, or even the coach, a football play is more like a skirmish, one battle in a sixty-minute war. That's a lot to wrap together in a single game engine, but maybe football was destined to find itself on your PC. Most football games operate under a system similar to fielding in baseball or hockey in general. On offense, you control whichever player holds the ball, and when the ball hits another player, your control shifts to that player. On defense, usually, you simply switch between players as you like.

One thing's for sure. The instant chaos of a football play is captured beautifully. In fact, it's often difficult for beginner-level users of such a game to get used to playing, because everything happens so fast after the snap. Players from all over converge immediately on your poor ball carrier, and more often than not, he gets flattened. That is, until you get good with the controls and your instincts.

The learning curve is very flat, that is to say it takes a long time to pick up some of these games and play them well, but the effort pays off. Football games beautifully combine the multi-position players, the complex play techniques, and the feel of the run and the tackle. The feel is achieved mostly with consistent visuals, but especially with sound. Turn up those speakers before you throw a pass or start a run, because the one thing you don't want to miss about any good football game is the loud thump or crunch heard when one player smashes another. More so than perhaps any other sport, the sounds heard in football are critically important both to the player and viewer experience.

It's not quite a Superbowl party, but a good football game on PC can be about as rewarding as a sports game can be - that is, until they invent a way to knock the wind out of the user after particularly grueling tackles.

For years, hockey was considered the domain of the cold-suffering folks north of the border, but more recently, its Fox slogan The Coolest Sport on Earth is starting to take hold.

While still the least popular and least fiscally successful of the four major North American sports, hockey is quickly gaining followers and momentum as it picks up the pace of its self-marketing and casual sports fans start to realize just how fast this sport flies. One of the big reasons that hockey is so cool, to summon a pun, is that it's played on ice. Players move in smooth, fluid motions, and more importantly, they move fast. As anyone knows, there's nothing less exciting than a slow sport. Interesting, maybe, but not exciting.

Although one might perhaps not have thought so, the ice-based motions of hockey actually end up more easily and accurately duplicated in a game than walking or running. Picture someone running without having to lift his legs from the ground and without having the rest of his body bobbing up and down as he does it, and you're picturing skating.

Granted, walking and running are the more natural motions for human beings, but ice-skating just looks better and plays more easily on the desktop PC. Even the best video gamers sometimes miscalculate an angle in their heads and will over-shoot an attempted steal in basketball or a tackle in football, simply because running, by nature, is awkward. An experienced hockey gamer, though, will seldom miss a charging check.

With the exception of the goalie, whose experience is almost completely undocumented in most hockey games, all positions are well defined and described. The center and wings go where they're supposed to go, and the defensemen skate backwards. All you have to do is control your one player and the rest of the team can more or less easily follow along. That's a big plus, because it focuses on the human player as the central figure in a hockey game, with his computer-controlled teammates as strictly secondary characters. They'll never score for you, you have to do that. But they'll usually be right where they have to, to receive a pass.

In that sense, hockey on computer is almost superior to hockey on the ice - your teammates do just what you'd have them do. No more great plays by you followed by foul-ups by your wingman to frustrate you. As for the fan, hockey on computer looks almost the same as hockey on television or live, complete with varying camera angles, wide-shots, and replays. Also, as with football, a good sound system can almost completely replicate the sound of a bone-crunching hit, complete with groans. All that and no concussions for the user!

Hockey, more so than almost any other, is a sport best learned young, when learning to skate is easiest. People of any age, though, can learn to play hockey on the PC. And love it.

Though soccer, or European football, really can't be called one of North American's major professional sports, it's certainly gaining momentum and progressing in that direction. And undeniably, it's the world's most popular sport. Game developers have been paying attention. Well, some of them.

Mysteriously, the incredibly broad appeal of soccer to youngsters has yet to be translated to popularity amongst older folks around here, so odds are actually fairly good that the only soccer you or I have played is little league. One important distinction that must be made is that computer soccer games use world pro league rules, including massive soccer fields, massive nets, and as many players on the field as American football - eleven per team.

So before you plug into the latest soccer game, be aware that it may not be as you remember it when you were ten. That said, soccer is a unique sport and a unique experience as a video game. With so many players on the field and only one objective (since hitting each other isn't quite as allowed as on the football gridiron), there's not always a lot for some on-field players to do. It's all about positioning and strategy, as every player lines up with the ball with respect to their own positions on the field and waits for the action to get closer to them.

That very thing is what makes soccer such a success as a computer game. Only one player controls the ball at any given time, and most if not all other players remain re-active to that player. It makes for a superb one-player game, and accurately reflects the fan experience. For soccer players interested in PC games, the experience is different but not necessarily worse. If nothing else, you get a whole lot more time with the ball!

To many, golf is the sport to learn in order to succeed in business. Granted, some prefer it to all other sports on merit alone, but to many, it lacks some of the key elements of competitive sport: cardiovascular exercise and team play. Despite all that, one of the most popular desktop sports experiences is golf.

For good reason, too. Computerized golf just makes for a fun game. Independent of its grass-based predecessor, PC golf is just a great combination of angles, distance, and timing. People from all walks of life - golfers, golf-haters, couch potatoes, children too young to really play golf, and folks too old for the walk - everyone seems to enjoy it.

The only points it loses on the player side are for style. One of the major components, perhaps the only major component, to a player's success as a golfer is the swing. There's a lot of technique involved, and several monthly publications are devoted to this aspect alone. Most golf games minimize the effort involved in swinging the club, instead focusing only on the direction of and amount of power used in the swing.

Maybe it's because the clubs are free, the walking is minimal, and there is little to no embarrassment to be suffered playing golf in the comfort of your own home. Maybe playing golf on your computer helps your real golf game. Or maybe it's because PC golf is just that good.

The sports chosen for this article in no way reflect higher popularity or merit. Simply, they're most often emulated as computer games, and thus most appropriate for analysis of that emulation. Other sports make for fun games, too: tennis, bowling, fishing, billiards, and even surfing. The above six are simply the ones that most reflect our society's taste as a whole, or at least sell the most games.

It's no coincidence that of the six "best of its kind" highlights listed, Electronic Arts has developed and published all but two. They'd have five out of six, too, if their baseball series, Triple Play, were as good as its counterparts. There's no bias here, EA Sports is just good at what it does: making realistic, true-to-life, and fun sports simulations. They're the best in the business. And at least until the new generation of sports game engines make their debut, they look to stay that way.

EA's greatness aside, the one common conclusion that can definitely be drawn here is that more often than not, sports translate better from the perspective of viewers than players, probably because there are more sports fans than athletes. Regardless, even though game developers have done a tremendous job of bringing the sports experience right to your desktop monitor, that's no excuse not to get out there and get some good, old-fashioned exercise. Who's up for some touch football?